Poster #76 - Dynamics of Parent and Teacher Involvement and Student Engagement over the Transition to Middle School

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

The transition to middle school can be a challenging time for adolescents, as evinced by normative declines in their academic motivation (Wigfield et al., 2015). To negotiate this transition successfully, students rely on support from trusted adults, and decades of research demonstrate that high quality relationships with parents and teachers can provide such support. Yet, just as adolescents need relationships more, some evidence indicates that the quality of connections with parents and teachers may be declining. As adolescents seek more independence from their parents, they reach out to other adults such as teachers. However, middle school teachers, who teach multiple classes with high enrollments, may find it difficult to develop close relationships with their students (Eccles & Roeser, 2015). These changes in the quality of relationships have the potential to leave adolescents without the support they need to sustain their engagement.
Although research shows that parents’ and teachers’ warm involvement are individually beneficial for students’ academic motivation, their effects have typically been examined through separate lines of research. A fuller picture of how social relationships shape adolescents’ engagement could be secured by examining their combined effects. One framework that highlights these combined, dynamic relations is a developmental cascade model. Because this approach emphasizes the reciprocal interactions of social partners working together over time, it also suggests that researchers should consider the reciprocal effects of adolescents on their adult social partners. When students show constructive engagement, these actions can feed back and reinforce the continued involvement of parents and teachers, thus creating a virtuous cycle. Alternatively, as adolescents disengage from school work, as is common during the transition to middle school, parents and teachers may respond by withdrawing their support, creating a vicious cycle.
This study utilizes a developmental cascade model to conceptualize and examine the combined effects of both parent and teacher involvement on the development of adolescents’ academic engagement across the transition to middle school as well as the dynamic, reciprocal influence of adolescent engagement on the continued involvement of parents and teachers. Using longitudinal data from four time points over the transition to middle school (fall and spring of 5th-6th grades), three research questions are investigated:
1. Are parent and teacher involvement each concurrently related to adolescents’ academic engagement?
2. Do parent and teacher involvement each uniquely predict changes in adolescents’ academic engagement as they transition to middle school?
3. Does adolescent academic engagement reciprocally predict changes in both parent and teacher involvement across the transition to middle school?
As shown in Figure 1, we hypothesize that parent and teacher involvement are each positively and uniquely related to adolescents’ academic engagement at the same time point and predict changes in adolescents’ engagement at subsequent time points, controlling for the other social partner’s involvement. We also hypothesize that adolescent engagement positively predicts changes in parent and teacher continued involvement. Table 1 presents preliminary descriptive and correlation analyses. The results of this study are discussed in light of the supports students need from adults over the transition to middle school.

Authors

• Nicolette Paige Rickert, Portland State University
  Presenting Author

• Ellen A. Skinner, Portland State University
  Non-Presenting Author